


Worlds

by thebellaved



Category: Original Work
Genre: Absurd, Alternate Universe, Creepy, Fantasy, Fever Dreams, Flash Fic, Flash Fiction Wednesday Challenge, Surreal, actually not really, it's just a flash fiction that feels like a fever dream
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-12
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:33:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27523096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebellaved/pseuds/thebellaved
Summary: A mysterious snapshot of a mysterious woman's fate without her world.
Kudos: 1





	Worlds

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, this is my first time writing! I hope someone out there likes it :)

“I don’t know what you expect me to do. It’s right over your heart.”

Her face flushes steadily. “I told you of my… my situation in confidence, and you tell me you  _ can’t _ ?”

The remover of worlds shakes his head. 

The world on the remover’s face is a gritty, average thing almost big enough to swallow the entire expanse of his features. His nose and mouth are already gone.

“I never asked you to tell me,” it vibrates. "You were the one who requested my service. And my service does not deal with heart-worlds or lung-worlds or worlds anywhere in that… general, ah, vicinity.”

She wets her still-intact lips with her world-less tongue as she searches the ground for answers.

“Most people hold their worlds on their faces,” he says, almost kindly. “I can usually relieve those. But the skin over your heart easily affects the organs within.”

She closes her eyes and shakes her head. She knows this.

“I don’t want to risk your life,” he tells her. 

She doesn’t care.

“Observe.” He pulls on his thick black gloves and reaches between her breasts to prod the fluttering shape of the world. 

Her jaw clenches but she tolerates the remover’s careful, professional touch.

The world appears to shiver (although she can’t feel it, of course) and a mess of small sparkles flit outwards, jabbing viciously at the gloved hand, before the world mutters and shifts, and they settle back down reluctantly.

A bead of blood is already swelling at the surface of her skin, and a red blush of internal bleeding spreads beneath.

“I’m sorry,” he tells her.

She thinks about the ancient myths, stories she’s transcribed, about birds that brush crocodile teeth, and sobs. She almost wishes her tears would fall and salt her world, but they follow the contours of her faces, paths predetermined by gravity. 

After all, wouldn’t it be ironic? Her tears are milky white like the fourteen moons of The World, and her world is unlike any other she’s seen—blue-green and large and almost spherical. It emits an attractive force almost irresistible.

She strokes it thoughtfully with one finger. It sighs. Sparkles swirl around her hand, coating it in a glittering film.

The remover watches disapprovingly.

“There’s a morgue next door,” he says.

She laughs helplessly. “I know.”

Ever since she was young, she had always dreamed of the day she would sleep in a platinum box. She had wondered what sights they would see when they opened her up again. But—

“I think they’ll put you away in glass.” The remover rubs the dry cracks of his skin, the crusty edges around his world, with oily fingers oversaturated in moisturizing creams. “Yours is much too beautiful, not to mention dangerous, I suppose.”

She wonders if she will miss transcribing myths when she’s been all eaten up and turned to radiant earth-dust. 

Perhaps the students with flawless bodies, the schoolchildren with tiny universes dug out of their faces, those whose bloody cavities have healed into proud scars shall learn her myths too.

“They’ll watch me decompose unelegantly,” she bites, cold and furious. “Because you can’t do any—"

The remover looks on mildly, blinking over the dusty edges of his world. “I wouldn’t worry about  _ inelegance _ —“ 

She does not miss the way he stresses the correct pronunciation.

“—when you can’t think for yourself anymore.”

Her set shoulders unclench helplessly. Her world senses the movement and stretches.

“I think I’m quite finished here,” she says.

She leaves the remover with her head held high, daring any onlookers to stare at her world. She knows her box is waiting.

Her whole world knows this too. It smiles, making itself more comfortable in her skin. 


End file.
